This morning I spent multiple hours writing an essay-style answer to a question half a line long. I've decided to provide this for your amusement. I've colored blue the best part though you're free to read the whole thing. If you look at that wall of text and cringe away then you've clearly gotten the visual aspect of the joke. I wrote an essay response to something less than one line long. Yeah. That's what you get when you ask me for advice with the wrong phraseology.
I would like to apologize in advance for this essay. It is not intended to be offensive or insulting. I am not attacking anyone in particular (except, perhaps, myself). Any user (or real person) who is mentioned by name has nothing to do with what I said and you shouldn't bother them. This is the longest reply I have ever written to any question on Gaia (baring those folks who once asked: "How did you turn 500g into a million gold in forty-eight days?" ). It took me a couple hours (seriously) to write. There is a TL;DR at the bottom which those of you who actually read the whole thing are free to consider a joke.
Well, I hate to pretend to be all definitive and say: "This is absolutely what you should be doing" because for one I Have Been Known To Be Wrong but also because I do not know everything there is to know about your hoards and your hoarding style or what prices you bought things at and so on and so forth and most importantly because I Cannot Predict The Future. I can only make assumptions based on past trends. Overall I make a lot of gold (even more if you count all the gold I've made for people who follow my advice) despite the fact that occasionally I am very, very wrong. Recommending Spectacular Halo as one example. That was a spectacular failure. I personally lost millions on that venture. Making assumptions based on past trends can (obviously) be a useful model for predicting the future but only if you are actually looking at the root causes of the trends and remembering that statistical analysis tenet of "CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION" (which should be barked in a mock drill sergeant voice with a chorus of other people repeating it frantically).
Macroeconomics is a terrible idea. Everything macroeconomists do is wrong. Sometimes they say things that are right but not because they know anything about the economy. Par for par (I mean this here sheerly in the the literal Latin "equal for equal" and not some crazy anglicized sports-related term of being good but not that great) some of the "best" (and more importantly most respected) financial analysts are, if you compare their predictions appropriately, significantly worse at knowing what is going on in the economy and what will be going on in the economy than if you picked randomly. That's right. Entrusting your stock-picking decisions to a random computer model (assuming here that the computer model is actually relatively random and that the algorithms are not flawed in some way that would cause it's stock-picking abilities to be biased) is a better idea in general than trusting the words of someone considered to be an expert in macroeconomics.
Consider this: A few decades ago the crime rate was rising dramatically all over the United States and people (very knowledgeable people in positions of power) predicted that the crime rate was going to skyrocket (even compared to the already elevated rates) within a few years. They predicted that the current generation of young people (the people just about to hit the peak crime-committing age window but who weren't yet there) were going to be the most violent ever seen. You know what happened within a few years? The crime rate dropped. And it didn't just drop. You could say it plummeted. Even though in that same time the population rose the crime rate decreased (as compared to how it was before not compared to the new population). And it wasn't that criminals were dying off or getting too old to commit crimes anymore. Crimes among the demographic you would assume least likely to commit them actually rose in that period. "White-collar" crimes also rose. So where was the drastic decrease in crime? Among the young generation. If you compare only crimes committed by the peak demographic and not the overall crime rate the crime rate in that period was practically in free-fall.
The explanation? There were a lot of explanations. At first they struggled to continue to instill the fear of rising crime rates. Gradually they realized crime rates were not going up and the same people predicting death and doom were now only too happy to take credit for the drop in crime (even though they had no idea why it happened) they made up a lot of reasons. Credit went to everything from police work, to education, to nutrition. Recently two books that feature this particular conundrum have come out with very interesting theories.
The Gladwell Explanation: The Gladwell theory is something like "Yes, police work and the Broken Windows Policy (a theory that is essentially that if penalties for small crimes are routinely enforced not only will small crimes not happen but large crimes will be discouraged as well because people see that you can't even get away with breaking a window- a kind of trickle-up thing) and education and the economy and jobs all had something to do with it. They all contributed- every single one of them. But none of them can take full credit or even anything other than a tiny share of the credit. Without all of them it wouldn't have happened. You added up one and one and one and one and one but instead of equating only to five the total of those shares became greater than the individual parts could ever have been and you totaled up to one hundred." Gladwell calls this "The Tipping Point". All great turns of events do not have a single root but rather many small capillaries that individually have almost no effect but together (and only together) create something huge.
The Levitt & Dubner Explanation: Their theory is rather more radical than Gladwell's. They concede that police work and things like that may have helped but that there would have been no magical Tipping Point without something no-one else even considered. They essentially say that the Gladwell theory is taking correlation and concluding causation. The Levitt & Dubner explanation goes back to a supreme court decision made in 1973 which is referred to as Roe v. Wade. You may have heard of Roe v. Wade. This is the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. I'd like you to pause a moment and absorb that assertion. Levitt & Dubner assert that the rising crime rate (which was expected to have risen even more dramatically) went down because of a decision made on abortion two decades prior to the sudden unexpected drop. You may think that this belief is insane. After all, how do those two things correlate? Readily. Why was it that when the US was poised on the brink of what seemed to be a massive rise in crime did crime suddenly drop among the age demographic most likely to commit crime? Because the people most likely to commit crime (poor persons raised in single-parent homes who had young if not under-aged mothers) were not born. Women in tough situations without the money for children or the support of a husband or who were too young to want kids now had the option to terminate the pregnancy. If this still seems far-fetched to you I encourage you to read Freakonomics and see the very, very solid math which does not merely correlate with the crime drop that they use as their supporting argument.
They both make very logical arguments with some supporting math and also make it clear why there is no way for macroeconomics to work (short of some kind computer model of unholy complexity that once it started making predictions would ruin the whole thing anyway). There are too many variables. There are too many variables in macroeconomics for anyone to be able to claim that they understand how it works completely and how all those variables interact to produce different results.
Gaia economics are not macroeconomics. There are very few inputs involved and many things you have to worry about in the real world (PR for example) do not apply. It is a lot easier to understand what is going on using the past trends theory of predicting the future. Sometimes, however, this does not work. I think the reasons Spectacular Halos were a Spectacular Failure (as far as hoarding is concerned) are manifold. My top theory I will state last. The other explanations have to do with the fact that the item was kept in the CS for a duration exceeding the announced duration, the panic-dumping that this caused, the fact that this was a brand-new type of item, and the way that animated items were pitched as being animated for a limited time and then having to purchase recharges (as a gold sink to control inflation that they caused to begin with). The main problem though was that when I (and others) thought about the past (Angelic Halo) we were not looking at causation but merely correlation. We compared the looks of the two items and figured that a Angelic Halo remake had to be popular. In retrospect I think that this is bizarre behavior especially on my part. I think that Angelic Halo is fugly and I would never want one. If I ever won one I would either give it away straight-up or sell it and give away a lot of the resulting gold. Angelic Halo is a shade of gold that doesn't appear much in Gaia items and it's hard to use in a balanced matching avatar. The only reason the people who have them wear them (or wanted them to begin with) is as a status symbol. Spectacular Halo is not a status symbol. It was as expensive as a good EI when it came out but without the limited availability and generational snob value or visual appeal (and multitude of poses) of a good EI.
So even though it is reasonably easy (if you have a good grasp of what you're doing) to give good predictions of what will and wont do well there is a reason that THG rules state that the Mods are not there to earn your gold for you but to offer only help and a swift boot to the rear in the proper direction. And there is a reason I hate making assertions. I don't want to say that you should absolutely hoard whatever is on the third page (which I desperately need to update and I swear I will do this now that I am not out of the state, caught up with trying to do NaNoWriMo and moving to a new appartment and having to wait for internet) or that you should absolutely sell when I say to do so.
Putting predictions into coherent words and quantifying that decision is kind of absurd. Some people keep rigorous and meticulous accounts of their hoards in spreadsheets and have actual math and data they could base future predictions on. I don't do that. I wouldn't even try. When people ask my opinion on a Brand Spanking New item I tell them to ask me later. When I research items I check out the graphs in the marketplace, I might check Tek-Tek to find out the origin. I look at the poses. I think about the user sdrawkcab and about her avatar making guide and different avatar styles and how the item could be used in avatars. I check wikipedia to see if the item has any kind of pop-culture reference that may be a mitigating factor in the price (I check wikipedia because I am not all up on pop-culture or memes). I compare the item to similar items (in price, looks, type, style, artist, timliness, pixeling, quality, pose-number, and color). I trawl the GCD. I check the market obsessively. I read what people in THG and TVG have to say about the item. I think about why Gaia is releasing this item and whether they might re-release it and how they might otherwise foil the hoarding of this item. I do not write any of these things down. I let them percolate in my thoughts.
Then I try to be helpful and tell other people my conclusions. It is hard to reasonably say why I think what I think and quantify my decisions. How do I explain that I decided to hoard something because I thought people would use it a lot according to sdrawkcab (who is an expert on fashion and not hoarding) and because it has a lot of good poses (without being able to quantify "good" ) and the artist is popular and the GCD likes it and the graphs look "promising" (whatever that means)? Well, I generally don't bother. I assume my credentials to decide these things based on the fact that I have made myself a lot of gold. I suggest things while rarely giving more than a partial explanation for why I would do that. I preface a lot of things with "I personally would do" and try to point out that I'm not perfect. I also try to stress the fact that even though people like BRAIN or LDownto or Kiss In Digital have also made lots (which is a severe understatement) of gold hoarding I don't follow their advice (unless it's something I already would have agreed with) and I don't necessarily always agree with them. I often strongly disagree with them. On many issues. Sometimes I lie by omission (I point out that I lie by omission and not flat-out lie because I have this thing about lying) so that when I dispense advice it is clear-cut and well-intentioned without explanations that may cause you to think something stupid is a brilliant idea and later get angry at me because of this (if you don't think I would actually do this I can give an example). And I generally (not just even but especially in real life) assume idiocy until intelligence is proven.
I am not saying with any kind of absolutes that you should sell Cirques now. I'm also not saying that you should absolutely buy whatever is on the third page or that doing so will absolutely make you gold. The third page exists because I think these things could make you a lot of gold. They could also lose you a lot of gold (I try not to focus on this thought for obvious reasons). I haven't hoarded any new RIGs for months (or recommended anyone else to do so unless they weren't getting many and planned on turning them over far sooner than I ever would) and instead focused my energy on getting rid of my RIG hoards because I suspect (and the gods only know it's highly probable it wont happen at all) that there will be a year-end bundle of bundles that re-releases all the RIGs put out since the last one. I think this because they have done it the last two years in a row. Last year it had a huge impact on the hoardability of the Quackers RIG and saving gold to invest in the superprize would be a lot better for you than investing in a RIG you may have to wait much longer than normal to profit from. I am actually expressing an excessive amount of caution. There may be no superprize at all. It might not effect previously re-leased RIGs at all if it is released. They may only re-release select RIGs. They may have some other year-end money-making scheme cooking up. I do not know.
I personally would rather do what I have done in not buying recent RIGs and getting rid of all the ones I had in a timely manner than be stuck with them if they do put out a new Superprize. I now have a lot (though I wont say how much exactly) of gold sitting in various accounts (because I'm too paranoid to keep it in one place) and waiting for superprize. Because I would rather be disappointed that there is no superprize to invest in (or ruin my hoards) than to figure that they wont put one out this year.
I consider the worst in each situation. Superprize fails to come out after I have neglected to hoard new RIGs and gotten rid of all my old ones and I have a pile of gold sitting idly. So I have to invest in something else or wait for the next RIG.
OR
I had figured that it wouldn't come out, hoarded all the latest RIGs and was working on selling off whatever hoards happened to be ripe and didn't have a lot of pure sitting around and it does come out. I now not only have a lot of hoards that are either actively losing me gold or will remain stagnant for much longer than I wanted to keep them and almost nothing to invest in a great hoard like superprize.
TL;DR
Jace would sell Cirques (and other recent RIGs) now if he had them. Jace has actually already sold off and/or not invested in all recent RIGs already in anticipation of superprize. Jace would also point out that page three is hardly intended as a religious text.
Jace also points out that he says these things for no reason he usually bothers explaining and that you are free to disagree with him as much as you like.
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